The President's Analyst (1967)

Touches You

Pretty Good

I'll tell you why so serious

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Great satire of many of our social institutions of the mid-Vietnam era. But not so funny now; too much dirty water over the dam since then. Plainly what passed for Liberals in those days were pilloried, as well as tired old targets--some more deserving than others--such as J Edgar Hoover, FBI, and CIA who apparently had enough muscle in those days to persuade Hollywood to change their initials, although to what end God only knows. I noted that the "right wing extremists" label was used in the movie, which was old hat then and is still the battle cry of Democrat propagandists. The more things change, the more things remain the same, and propaganda slogans become eternal verities. But old Ma Bell, THE telephone company of those days, isn't with us to kick around any more. Our present crop of corporate and financial rulers are nothing like the benign despot portrayed in this picture. Our boys don't pretend to serve; they just brazenly exploit, and laugh all the way to the bank with their "bail out" billions. Anyhow, all and all The President's Analyst is a good evening's entertainment with some nice acting and even a slice of history. But who was the analyst's very obliging sweety working for?

Dr. Sidney Schaefer (James Coburn) is picked to be the analyst for the president (never shown or named). However the president's problems begin to affect Schaefer and he gets paranoid and wants to escape from his job and life. He does--but secret agents from all over the world are out to get him because he knows so much...This was not a big hit when it came out. My guess is that it was TOO strong for its time--a lot of severe editing happened before it was even released and it was butchered in initial TV showings. But now it's been released uncut and it's been regarded as a classic. The movie is quick, powerful and never stops moving. It basically goes after everybody--the CIA, the FBI, liberals, conservatives, Russians...you name it. It's not really THAT offensive in today's climate (and it is very dated in some respects) but I can only imagine the reaction this got in 1967. The cast is dead on target. Godfrey Cambridge is amusing in a supporting role as is Joan Darling. William Daniels is downright hilarious in his small role. But Coburn holds this together. He's engaging, charismatic and full of life and energy. He's such a likable character you're rooting for him all the way. Every time he flashed that amazing grin I was grinning too! Fast, funny, loads of fun. Sadly I don't think Coburn lived long enough to see this appreciated (he passed away in 2002). It's still not well known but VERY much worth seeking out. Recommended.

Kind of fun. An episodic, jet-propelled satire of just about everything in the contemporary newspapers. The President of the US (Lyndon B. Johnson at the time, briefly glimpsed walking his hound dogs on the White House lawn) is a troubled man. He recruits a psychoanalyst (James Coburn). Johnson was REALLY troubled. Troubled enough to summon Coburn at all hours of the day or night by means of hidden, blinking red lights. The red lights and buzzers interrupt Coburn while he's in sessions with other patients, while he's entering elevators, while he's making love, while he's headed towards the urinal. It drives him nuts, and he finally takes off on his own to escape the burdens.Alas, the word gets out that the president's analyst is free. He knows so much that every secret agency in the world -- from China and Russia to Canada -- are out to find and kidnap him and send him to what he calls "a brain laundry." Worse, the "CEA" and the "FBR" know this, and they set out to kill him before the others can get him.The chase takes everyone from Washington, through New York and New Jersey, to the Midwest. Nice to see Greenwich Village again, as it was then, watching Coburn run in and out of the Cafe Wha?, which was on, what, West Fourth? The Cafe Wha? was a phenomenon of the psychedelic age and a lot of the targets here are -- blissed-out hippies and so on.Nobody -- no social position, no attitudinal set, no object, no entity of any kind -- is spared. William Daniels and his family live in a disgustingly neat and revoltingly decorated middle-class tract home in Seaside Heights. They're liberals. We know they're liberals because Daniels makes a point of telling us. The only thing is, his home and car have .44 magnums stashed in them because they are surrounded by gun-crazy right-wing fascists who might attack them.The chief of the "FBR" is named Lux, a brand of vacuum cleaner, just like Hoover. Hoover had what amounted to a fetish for tall, impressive agents, so Lux is about five and a half feet tall, and all of his agents are even shorter than he is.That height business is typical of the jokes. You have to (1) notice it, then (2) interpret it. With some of the other jokes, you might not get past (1). For instance, there is a scene in which Coburn is boffing a hippie chick in the middle of a field and he is stalked by a killer. The killer is killed by an agent of some other government. He in turn is killed by still a different agent, and so on. And as the serial assassinations go on, the weapons used become more and more ridiculous -- from shooting, to strangling, to a blowgun, to poison gas, to a fish net, and finally a pitchfork. It's more ludicrous than funny, I guess, but someone went to some trouble to think of that sequence of weapons.Competent performances by about all concerned, especially Severn Darden as a Russian agent. Joan Delaney, Coburn's girl friend, looks and acts like a model. She has a whispery, pre-teen voice, and she walks with that half-flailing slink that models have developed for the runway.It's not a zany laff riot but it's quietly amusing and it is nicely paced, with few pratfalls and a lot of gags that are almost subliminal, especially now that their targets have been almost lost in the mists of antiquity. You might enjoy it more if you'd been around and aware in 1968.

A very important and excellent scene was cut from the many TV and VHS versions of the film. That is where just after Sidney does his walk through NY, he goes to a experimental film and meets Nan, apparently at random. The vignette is a wonderful send up of Greenwich village types and without this scene we don't know that Nan is not an established lover, but a sudden free love intimate. At least apparently. Can anyone tell me if this is restored in the DVD version? One of the finest scripts of sardonic comedy, certainly on a par with 'Dr Strangelove' and 'the assassination bureau'. The anamatronic and unkillable CEO of the phone company is a deeply frightening perception of the bland, machinelike, self-righteous and perhaps unstoppable movement to box in the human being. Of course with today's technology we won't see a wire coming out of our president's shoe.